I use my Ubuntu server for nearly everything, it'd be great if my Macs could back up to it too using the great built in Apple Time Machine functionality. TimeMachine relies on the AFP as the transfer protocol for backing up and transmitting data over the network. Netatalk is the Open Source implementation of AFP. Mac OS X requires encryption to work properly but the standard package of netatalk provided in the Ubuntu repositories doesn’t include this feature. So we have to build our own netatalk package from the sources with the encryption feature enabled. Read on...

ProFTPD grew out of the desire to have a secure and configurable FTP server that aims to offer the feature set required for more sophisticated FTP sites. Out of the box the FTP transactions are not secure, they are not encrypted at all. Seeking to encrypt my traffic I spent hours trying to get ProFTPD 1.3.2c (the version in Ubuntu 10.04's repositories) working with TLS. Only to find out there is a bug in ProFTPD 1.3.2c read on to see how I overcame the problem...

OpenDNS markets itself as the fastest growing internet security and DNS service. OpenDNS is the leading provider of security and infrastructure services that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. OpenDNS services enable consumers and network administrators to secure their networks from online threats, reduce costs and enforce Internet-use policies.

For OpenDNS to work the service needs to know which IP address your network resides on. If like me your internet service provider assigns you a dynamic IP address then you have to setup a dynamic updating service that keeps OpenDNS updated with your current IP address. This posts walks through the steps I used to set up ddclient (a linux dynamic dns updating tool) with OpenDNS. Read on...

With the aim of managing bitorrenting on my network (i.e. preventing torrents) I opted to install a proxy server on a Ubuntu gateway server to control access to torrent sites for the clients on the network. This was a basic set up with a minimal Squid proxy server config in order to get up and running quickly, and to ultimately start preventing torrent usage. Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. Read on...

I've been experiencing woes with a Samba server recently with all sorts of gremlins around access, and write access specifically. After gutting the Samba config several times to the bare minimum I happened to notice that mysteriously the whole EXT4 file system partition on which the Samba shares resided had become mounted as read only. After a little investigating I think the culprit is a hard drive on its way out. Ironically the drive in question is a Seagate drive and the image I think is therefore, rather suited. Read on...

I've recently been struggling to access my Ubuntu Samba server from Windows XP clients experiencing intermittent success and at times receiving the message "is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource." Reading through the Samba documentation it appears that the Encrypt Passwords parameter must be set when using Windows clients, read on for the solution...